RWD and design and frameworks

21 March 2014

In response to the tweets and posts about RWD and design issues, Stephen Hay has written a really great post. I agree with him. Here’s just one quote in regards to frameworks, but you should, as usual, read the whole thing:

But why hide the web from them behind an abstraction layer? Would designers come up with more appropriate visual patterns if they knew more about what was possible outside the confines of a framework?

I realize now that one thing I forgot to mention in my post, when I discussed designers and developers working together, is that I also am not using a framework. And most recently I worked with a kick ass designer who understands quite a bit about the web and graphic design, so that was helpful. When we worked together, framework free, and he pushed at me try new things, we weren’t constrained. This is how being pushed by the designer led me to rethink some of the habits I fall back on to code responsive design, leading me to better end results and ultimately, we made work that I hope was interesting.

In the past several days, I’ve gotten asked several times what frameworks I use to “make things responsive.” I’ve found this question interesting mostly because I don’t use a framework. Each project is unique, each design unique, and therefore the responsive problems for me to solve in the code are unique. Frameworks don’t really think of things as being unique, they are in the business of doing things the same way all the time. In order to do a design justice, but also in order for me to push myself to learn new things, I prefer to start with no constraints.

As an aside, having these conversations, thinking about these things, that’s what makes me love this community. I am grateful to all who are sharing their thoughts.